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WEEKLY WANKER #066: TOM HARRIS

…”Four days to go and, I don’t know about you, but I’m really bored of politics now. So here’s a video of a dog being dragged around on a carpet.”

So grumbled then Labour MP, Tom Harris, in what many hoped would be his last “political” contribution. Despite dragging his dug around, he unsurprisingly failed to win re-election to Westminster, losing his seat to the SNP’s Stewart McDonald. With Harris declaring himself delighted, “that I no longer have to listen to the complaints of constituents and local party members, and that I don’t have to read tortuous, sanctimonious emails from 38 Bloody Degrees” we had thought that would be the end of the wee man. How wrong we were.

This weekend, it was announced that the permanently disgraced/disgruntled Harris is to lead the Scottish branch of “Vote Leave” campaign, which aims to get Britain out of the EU, so we can turn the clock back on human rights and create a racist hellhole – issues Tom has been an avid campaigner for in the past.

Elected to Westminster in 2001, Harris described himself as a passionate Blairite: supporting the invasion of Iraq, 42 day detention without charge, ID cards and Trident. Harris was also a frequent pain in the arse for the Independent Parliamentary Standards Authority (IPSA), who review MPs expenses. Despite receiving £166,991 in expenses in 2007/8, he famously spat the dummy when his claims for steriliser and a cot for his second home were rejected. He even took to the Telegraph to moan about how MPs were definitely NOT corrupt, so we should all stop being nasty to them.

His clashes with the expenses watchdog left the MP rattled.

Despite pressure from the Commissioner for Standards in Public Life, IPSA still allows MPs to employ family members, a practice not allowed in Holyrood. In 2011, it was revealed that Harris employed his wife as an office manager, at a cost to the taxpayer of over £40,000.

But saying sorry wasn’t enough to save Harris in 2012, when he made a Downfall parody video, casting Alex Salmond as Hitler. Following the backlash, he was forced to quit his position as Labour’s social media adviser. And to think, he could have been delighting us with dog dragging videos….

Being kicked out of Westminster in 2014 hasn’t stopped Tom taking to social media to furiously bellow and then subsequently backtrack. After one late night rant which ended,

So anyway, after 60 per cent votes for sure fire election losers, IRA-supporting Shadow Chancellors and Scottish Labour unnecessarily splitting the party on issues over which it has no responsibility, we have a Shadow Minister telling “Stop the War” – a madcap coalition of trots, Islamists and anti-west fury chimps – that Labour will consult them on how it will vote on Syria.

So that’s it. Labour has jumped the shark. It has gone from “a bit bonkers” to “irredeemable” in the space of a single day.

And I give up. That’s it for me. Giving. Up.

Goodbye.

he had to wake up and smell the booze coffee, hastily briefing that he hadn’t yet given up on Labour, although a recent Telegraph column included the line,

a consistent pattern of complaints took shape quite early on: filthy and vastly overcrowded living arrangements, organised aggressive begging, the ghetto-isation of local streets where women no longer feel safe to walk due to the presence of large groups of (workless) men, the rifling through domestic wheelie bins by groups of women pushing oddly child-free prams, and a worrying increase in the reporting of aggressive and violent behavior in local schools.

There’s an excellent demolition of this pish here, which looks at what’s really happening in Govanhill, but suffice to say, it’s beyond shoddy to appoint Tom Harris, someone with a clear history of inciting racial tension, to head the Leave campaign. Harris clearly hasn’t gotten off the anti-immigrant bandwagon either, his first act following his appointment was writing a piece in The Record, urging us to leave the EU so we could “take control of our borders.”

Any rumours Scotland’s branch of the “Vote Leave” campaign might have arguments beyond “Stop Immigration” and “Make Britain Great Again” are beginning to look unfounded. And that’s before you consider the rival anti-EU “Grassroots Out” campaign, which features such wondrous figures as UKIP’s David Coburn and perennial arsehole George Galloway, whose first contribution to the debate was to stand alongside Nigel Farage and deliver a baffling and dangerously racist speech, in which he declared he was not prepared to “subcontract, to the Romanian Government, the right to decide who can come and live and work in Britain, who we deport…”

As the rival Leave campaigns battle to be the most racist, the Remain campaign can only terrify us with tired re-runs of indyref scare stories.

With another ex-Labour MP/Weekly Wanker Frank Roy in charge of the Remain campaign, we’re in a bizarre situation where both UK wide groups have appointed former Labour patriarchs to head their Scottish sections – despite both Roy & Harris failing spectacularly at the polls only last year.

As the 2 (purple) headed monster rolls on, I don’t know about you, but I’m really bored with politics now, so here is a video of Tom Harris after being dragged around the carpet on election night.